The Way to the End
by Rebecca Hb
Summary: Snapshots of seven Dai Li during the events of "City of Walls and Secrets". OC Fic, Dai Li-centric.


**The Way to the End**

###

Author's Notes: I'm assuming there's actually a week or two between the beginning and end of "City of Walls and Secrets", as well as slotting Aang's Tale from "Tales of Ba Sing Se" into there.

Long Feng, Iroh, and Jet are canon characters. Hyo, Mi-Cha, and Lanh belong** Dark Puck**. Everyone else belongs to me.

Hyo is Long Feng's second-in-command, Xin Wan is the Chief Mindbender of the Dai Li, and Liu, Xiang, Qin, and Jae are the four Dai Li captains.

###

_a fine line_

"This is for his own good," Tai argues, and it takes very little of Xiang's self-restraint not to send the other Dai Li hurtling towards the wall. He's used to the slow roil of anger and contempt for his fellows.

Too used to it, really. Part of him, the part that doesn't want to smash Hyo's face in, thinks he should request an extended leave until the lava eating away at him has solidified. But there isn't any time for that right now, not in the middle of this new almost-crisis.

(There's never any time, is there?)

"The Avatar," he replies without heat, "Is a force of change. We do not want him in Ba Sing Se, and we should not keep him here."

Besides, he has it under control.

Duyi, the third of their trio standing guard at the gate of the Earth King's palace, turns his head to look outside. "He's here."

Xiang turns to look over his shoulder, watching with hard eyes as a carriage crosses the plaza in front of the palace entrance. A Joo Dee sits in it, across from a Water Tribe girl who stares out at them.

"He's just a child, Xiang," Tai says when the carriage is out of sight.

"That only makes him more dangerous." His eyes flick to the other Dai Li. "You're already underestimating him."

###

_the boy who cried wolf_

Jae grins out from under the brim of his hat as he picks up West Wind tile the soldier discarded. He is roundly cursed by the other three players, though both of the soldiers are more nervous about it than Jae's partner is. Sang Min knows he won't abuse any of his Dai Li powers over losing a game of mahjong, though.

The game is going well, however, and Jae has only won two of the previous four rounds because one of the soldiers is a mahjong-fiend. It's really between the two of them, Sang Min and the other soldier are just playing to fill out round.

Someone comes pounding up to the street-corner they're playing on, gasping and panting for breath. A refugee boy from the looks of it, and he stares at the Dai Li and soldiers with wide eyes. He blurts out, "A crazy boy just attacked another boy, and they're fighting with swords, and he says the other boy is a firebender!"

Jae looks at Sang Min, and they both stand together. "Where?"

The boy points back the way he came. "At the teashop! Mushi's teashop."

Jae recognizes the name, though the place isn't officially called that. He and Sang Min have been in once on their day off to get some of the new tea. "Game's over, you win," he tells the soldier.

"Take the boy home, please," Sang Min requests.

Then the two of them stride off, Jae using some of Liu's hand-gestures to tell Sang Min how they were going to handle this. The usual way, really, because someone blathering that loudly about the war needs to be silenced.

###

_i don't want to hear it_

The Avatar is in Ba Sing Se, and Hyo has never had a bigger headache. If it's not one thing, it's another - they're disrupting the circles with talk of the war, they won't let their Joo Dee take care of them, they insist on seeing the Earth King now-now-now. Managing the Avatar is taking a rather large amount of Dai Li resources, and Hyo is not happy about that.

Right now, he has the door to his office locked, and he is reading to Mi-Cha. His daughter is old enough to read herself, but it relaxes him to sit with her and read from the book of tales his wife had brought with her to their marriage.

In the middle of the tale of a silver swindle, someone raps at his door. He ignores it, and a few moments later comes the faint rattle of someone picking the lock. When the door swings open, he doesn't even look up.

"It was locked for a reason, Lanh."

Mi-Cha gives him an impressed look, which means he identified who it was correctly. Not difficult, really - very few of the Dai Li had any training with lockpicks. Of those, only Lanh, their daring pickpocket, would ignore the door being locked on Hyo's office.

The trainee offers him an abbreviated bow, tucking the lockpicks back into his sleeves. He dresses like any full Dai Li, except he has no hat. That will come when his training is complete. "Practicing, sir. Qin thought you would want to know about this."

"Is it about the Avatar?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then it can wait fifteen minutes." Hyo gives Lanh a hard look.

The trainee appears to consider it, then dips into a full bow of apology and backs out of the office.

"Lock the door behind you," Hyo orders, and a moment later comes the faint sound of lockpicks working in his lock again.

###

_make-believe_

Xin Wan plays with dolls.

"The green and white ruqun with the gingko leaves would look lovely," he says. "Especially with the gingko-leaf earrings."

The grey-eyed Joo Dee chirps her agreement and pulls the items of clothing that make up the ruqun out from her wardrobe, holding them up to cover herself. The outfit consists of a soft green wraparound skirt with gingko leaves in the palest of yellows and a fine white blouse. It belongs to this Joo Dee specifically; they picked it out last time he played with her.

He does not comment, and the Joo Dee falls silent, looking at him with lost eyes and blank expression. The fairytale toy caught between being a rag doll and a real girl.

"Put it on," he decides. He smiles at her, and she smiles back in perfect mimicry of him. "Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?"

"Of course!" She replies as she begins to dress herself.

Of course. There is no other possibility.

#

Xin Wan makes dolls.

He stands in front of a group of Joo Dee dolls, smiling at them. They are all pretty young women, each one of them carefully made to fit exactly what Long Feng needs. What Ba Sing Se needs, and he is not so young to think the two are one in the same.

Now all he has to do is teach the dolls the words, so they can become real girls again.

"I'm Joo Dee. Welcome to Ba Sing Se," he says. The Joo Dee dolls repeat him dutifully, their expressions beginning to take on his smile.

"We are so lucky to have our walls to create order."

The Joo Dee dolls repeat him, exactly in unison, exactly with the same inflection, exactly with the same expression.

"There are the ones outside protecting us, and the ones inside that help maintain order." Cages, too, but that's not something they need to learn. It's not something anyone in Ba Sing Se needs to learn.

He would have liked not to have learned it.

#

Xin Wan supervises others when they make dolls.

"There is no war in Ba Sing Se," Bae says soothingly as he stands behind the track with its circling lantern. A stone chair holds a wild-haired refugee boy, stone clamps in place to keep his head looking towards the flame.

Xin Wan observes through an eye-hole in the wall, studying his assistant's technique. He wonders what kind of doll Bae will make of the boy. Given Long Feng's instructions, the boy must remain very close to who he once was but there's no reason Bae can't make him happier.

"What are you talking about?" The boy demands, words falling over each other like an avalanche. "Where do you think all the refugees come from? You can't hide it!"

He rather hopes Bae does make the boy happier. There's no reason for the war to continue hurting the people of Ba Sing Se.

Bae doesn't argue with the boy, doesn't respond at all. Now is the time for the mantra to get them both into the right mental space for a making. "There is no war within the walls. Here we are safe. Here we are free."

###

_maybe_

The sun is shining, the day is beautiful, and Qin perches on a rooftop with Hyun Su. The other Dai Li watches the Avatar's residence while Qin lengthens and shortens a piece of clear quartz. Practice, to keep himself sharp.

He wishes he could figure out how to coax it to grow away from the blood inclusions. Hyo won't let him teach Mi-Cha with this piece while the blood still stains inside one tip.

"The girls are leaving," Hyun Su says.

Qin signals the scarred Dai Li to follow them, then shortens and inserts the quartz piece back into his stone bracelet. He shifts position to keep watch on the two boys. They aren't doing anything interesting today, for which he's mildly thankful. The stampede the Avatar caused the other day was quite bad enough. He's starting to come around to Xiang's idea that they should let the Avatar take his bison and leave.

The Avatar passes by one of the windows, face bright with a grin and chattering at his Water Tribe companion, and it hits again how _young_ he is. Twelve, maybe thirteen if he's lucky, and they want him to face **Ozai**?

No, that's _wrong_, even more wrong than some of the things the Dai Li do.

Qin peels back rock from his fingertips and presses them against the bloody piece of quartz. It's better for the Avatar to stay here, where it's safe. He may be young and impulsive, but the Dai Li can protect him from himself.

###

_understanding_

Liu gets up in the morning and wraps a scarf around his throat and lower face. He leaves only his eyes uncovered. The ends of the scarf get tucked in so there is nothing for anyone to pull on, and when he's done, he doesn't check to see if it can stand up to the course of a full day. He did in the first year, but it's been six years now since the fireblast took him across the face, and he's mastered covering the scars.

He leaves the small room in Lake Laogai he usually sleeps in and goes to find today's reports. He considers asking Hyo for time in the Lower Ring, because he is tired of being down here in the green darks. He misses the sun.

According to the reports, there are a pair of firebenders working in a teashop in the Lower Ring. Hyo has temporarily assigned a pair of agents to watch them, but both he and Long Feng would prefer Liu to assign one of his own with one of Xiang's.

Liu can read between the lines, and he knows Hyo would not prefer that. Of the four Dai Li captains, he is the least free to walk Ba Sing Se. So many of the agents under his command are assistant mindbenders; someone needs to tend those who work under Lake Laogai.

Firebenders are tricky. Many of the older Dai Li agents have scars and hates from the Siege. Many of the younger ones do not respect the power of fire properly. Perhaps the ones who could mindbend would better respect it, since they needed flame as part of their work.

He has not had good tea for some time, and the reports do speak highly of the tea served by the firebenders. He will go and see them himself, he decides, before making his decision.

#

The tea is very good, and Liu is glad he went himself, because even simple Earth Kingdom robes do not disguise the Dragon of the West. At least not to Liu's eyes; he saw the man very closely six years ago when the Wall was breached.

Long Feng will not want these two to stay here in the Lower Ring. They are too close to being able to leave, and that would not do at all.

In fine calligraphy, Liu writes his appreciation of the tea on a piece of cheap paper. The Dragon smiles and does not ask about his scarf or why he doesn't talk. This is good, because he thinks a firebender would recognize the official story for the lie it was.

Down in the Lower Ring, though, what is another refugee in simple clothes and hiding burn scars?

###

_they've become truth_

On a balcony in the Earth King's palace, Long Feng watches the sun set over his city.

_His_ city. Not the Earth King's, though Kuei is a dear boy to him. Not General How's, though the man seemed to think the two of them were of equal rank.

His city, and it's both lie and fact.

The Avatar is disrupting the peace of the city. Certainly some of the changes the boy has caused have benefited the city. But his goals are not Long Feng's goals. The Avatar wishes to restore balance and defeat the Fire Nation. Perhaps _he_ can do that, but Long Feng knows Ba Sing Se, the Earth Kingdom, cannot.

He has the finest military minds of the Earth Kingdom at his disposal. Does the Avatar think they know nothing?

Does the Avatar realize how hopeless it actually is?

No. The Avatar is young, and for young people of power, ignorance often means they can succeed at the impossible.

Perhaps the Avatar can face Ozai and defeat him. Perhaps he can end the war and restore balance to the world. Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

Long Feng will not sacrifice his city to maybes.

Not when he already has reports of Fire Nation infiltrators.

**-End-**


End file.
